Introduction
Rising electricity demand driven by AI, data centers, electrification, and industrial decarbonization is reshaping national energy strategies, and nuclear is returning to the center of them. More than 20 countries have pledged to triple nuclear capacity by 2050, and meeting decarbonization goals is expected to require global capacity to rise from about 420 gigawatts electric (GWe) today to over 1,000 GWe.
But as programs grow larger, more industrialized, and more interconnected, the decisive question is shifting. Technology choice still matters — different reactor types carry very different licensing pathways, fuel-supply requirements and maturity — but it is increasingly delivery capability, rather than technology selection, that is becoming the greater constraint on whether countries can build these programs successfully.
Technology Evolution Is Transforming the Commercial Viability of Nuclear Power
Over seven decades, technology has evolved steadily. Generation I proved commercial feasibility; Generation II built the fleet that still supplies much of today’s nuclear electricity; Generation III-plus brought major gains in passive safety, reliability, and plant life; and Generation IV promises further advances in efficiency, fuel use, and industrial applications.
Collectively, these successive generations have fundamentally strengthened the commercial viability of nuclear power.
This transformation has been driven through four complementary dimensions:
- Improved economics, enabled by greater standardization, modularization, and serial production, reducing construction uncertainty and strengthening the investment case.
- Enhanced safety, through passive safety systems, simplified reactor designs, and improved operational resilience.
- Greater operational flexibility, enabling nuclear facilities to support hydrogen production, desalination, district heating, and industrial heat alongside electricity generation.
- Shorter delivery timelines, enabled through modular construction, standardized designs, and increasing industrialization of program delivery.
Among these developments, small modular reactors (SMRs) stand out as one of the industry’s most promising innovations. They are not a new reactor technology. They apply proven designs within a different, factory-based delivery model and, in step with the sector’s wider industrialization, their expanding deployment is accelerating the shift from bespoke megaprojects towards standardized, repeatable delivery.
Technology Evolution Is Reshaping the Future Energy Landscape
The future will not be characterized by a single generation of reactor or a single type of generating asset. Instead, countries will increasingly develop integrated energy portfolios combining:
- Large-scale nuclear reactors providing reliable baseload generation.
- SMRs adding flexible, scalable capacity alongside them.
- Battery Energy Storage Systems and other storage, where they strengthen system flexibility.
- Integration, where viable, with industrial applications such as industrial heat, hydrogen, and desalination.
Rather than managing individual power plants, governments and utilities will increasingly manage portfolios of complementary assets, balancing reliability, flexibility, resilience, and decarbonization across an integrated energy system.
This transformation extends far beyond technology. It fundamentally changes the capabilities required to successfully develop, regulate, deliver, and operate future nuclear programs.
Technology Evolution Creates New Capability Requirements
Every major technology transition creates new capability requirements. For nuclear, these span four interconnected levers that must evolve together:
Lever 1 — Government and National Strategy
Governments must redefine the role of nuclear within long-term national energy, industrial, and economic strategies. Beyond selecting technologies, they must establish the policy, investment, financing, localization, and institutional frameworks that enable sustainable program delivery over several decades.
Lever 2 — Regulation and System Integration
Regulators and system operators must evolve beyond licensing individual reactors. Future regulatory frameworks must safely accommodate multiple reactor technologies, modular deployment models, grid integration, cyber resilience, and increasingly interconnected energy systems while maintaining the highest standards of nuclear safety.
Lever 3 — Program Development and Delivery
Program development organizations face the most significant transformation. As delivery shifts from bespoke megaprojects towards industrialized programs, these organizations must evolve from managing individual projects to orchestrating multiple technologies, manufacturing facilities, supply chains, delivery partners, and long-term asset portfolios.
Lever 4 — Industry and Ecosystem Development
Technology vendors, EPC contractors, manufacturers, financiers, research institutions, universities, and local industry must collectively evolve into an integrated ecosystem. The maturity of this ecosystem will increasingly determine program affordability, localization, resilience, and delivery certainty.
While all four levers are critical, the greatest transformation will occur within program development organizations, where new technologies are fundamentally redefining how nuclear programs are conceived, organized, and delivered.
The New Capability Agenda for Program Development Organizations
Historically built to deliver large, bespoke capital projects, nuclear program organizations now need a fundamentally different operating model — not replacing their traditional capabilities but expanding and strengthening them to manage industrialized delivery, mixed portfolios, and increasingly complex ecosystems. Three strategic shifts define this transformation.
From Project Delivery to Program Orchestration
The role evolves from project manager to program orchestrator — coordinating multiple reactor technologies, manufacturing facilities, EPC contractors, regulators, technology vendors, digital platforms, and long-term operating assets.
From Site Construction to Industrialized Delivery
Construction must extend beyond the site — integrating factory manufacturing, modular assembly, logistics, production planning, configuration management, and digital traceability so that manufacturing excellence and construction excellence operate as a single delivery model.
From Intelligent Owner to Ecosystem Orchestrator
Most significant of all, the owner organization itself becomes an ecosystem orchestrator — aligning governments, regulators, technology vendors, EPC contractors, manufacturers, financiers, academia, and local industry so that strategy, delivery, and long-term capability stay aligned.
These shifts reach into every discipline: Engineering moves towards platform design and repeatable configurations; commercial and procurement towards supply-chain orchestration and long-term partnerships; project controls towards portfolio and production management; quality assurance towards end-to-end assurance across manufacturing and construction; and operations towards fleet management, lifecycle optimization, and future expansion.
Ultimately, the competitive advantage of future nuclear programs will depend less on the ability to manage an individual project and more on the ability to coordinate an integrated ecosystem capable of delivering repeatable, scalable, and resilient nuclear programs.
How Ankura Can Help: From Strategy to Successful Delivery
As nuclear programs become larger, more industrialized, and more interconnected, delivery capability — not technology selection — is becoming the greater constraint. Building it requires expertise across governance, program controls, operating model design, commercial strategy, and ecosystem development.
At Ankura, we bring experience across some of the UK’s and Europe’s most complex nuclear programs, together with deep expertise in major capital projects and infrastructure across the GCC. We partner with governments and program owners across the full lifecycle — from understanding and aligning program vision, to establishing governance and intelligent-owner capability, planning and procuring effectively, delivering and assuring, and operating and optimizing — bridging the gap between strategic ambition and successful delivery.
© Copyright 2026. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and not necessarily the views of Ankura Consulting Group, LLC, its management, its subsidiaries, its affiliates, or its other professionals. Ankura is not a law firm and cannot provide legal advice.
